Saturday, June 21, 2008

Carnaval

"Brazil currently imports 70% of the fertilizers it consumes, especially potassium (90%), phosphates and nitrogen compounds. Arab countries, in turn, import 90% of the foodstuffs required to meet their populations' needs. Each side has what the other side needs.

In order to solve this equation, Brazil is negotiating, with Arab producer countries, tariff preference and regular export deals for commodities - beef, chicken meat, soy, coffee and fruit - in exchange for fertilizers, which would be regularly supplied by that region of the world."

2 comments:

Why do we use clean drinking water to flush human excrement back into our water sources? It's unsustainable, bad for the planet and for soil fertility.

How much raw sewage goes into the Mediterranean or the rivers in Lebanon/Palestine/Syria/Turkey? Not to mention Egypt. How much precious drinking water is used to flush that raw sewage from homes into the sea and rivers?

Can the Middle East afford to use its drinking water in such a fashion?

And this is related to the post because composting human (and livestock) manure to return to agriculture lands will improve soil quality and reduce the need for artificial, mined fertilizers.

Nature is a balanced system. If we work with the natural balances, we can thrive. Humans eat the fruits of the earth and excrete wastes. Those wastes are part of restoring the earth's fertility to produce more fruit for human consumption.

Again, Rami of course knows this. but the rest of the planet... how aware are any of us of the harm done by our current mechanized/industrialized systems for agriculture, water and sewage?